HMIP Inspection of East Sutton Park

The prison was given a full inspection in September 2023. The full report can be read at the Ministry of Justice web site, just follow the links below. In their latest report the inspectors said:

East Sutton Park is an open prison near Maidstone in Kent, holding just under 100 women. Set in a rural location, the main building is a former manor house, where women live in dormitories, although during our inspection some of these were closed due to fire safety concerns. Within the grounds there are excellent additional accommodation units, capable of supporting semi-independent living.

This was our first visit to the prison since 2016, and we found that it continued to deliver excellent outcomes for the women held. We assessed these as ‘good,’ our highest score, in three of our healthy prison tests. Only in purposeful activity had outcomes dropped slightly, to ‘reasonably good.’

The prison was overwhelmingly safe and respectful, and the well-being of women was prioritised. Violence and self-harm were rare and there was much to motivate and incentivise engagement in the prison’s regime, not least the extensive use of temporary release (ROTL) to support employment, family ties and resettlement. At the time of our inspection over 80% of women had access to ROTL and many had full-time, paid employment in the community. The success of this approach was further evidenced by the considerable number of women who retained their position with employers following their release. These achievements, however, were undermined by weaknesses in education provision. Our colleagues in Ofsted assessed the overall effectiveness of learning and skills as ‘requires improvement’ which was disappointing in the context of the more positive outcomes we identified.

The promotion of equality had stalled. We found little evidence of significant differential outcomes, but our survey indicated some more negative perceptions among some groups with protected characteristics. This suggested a need for better communication, although consultation with prisoners, as well as arrangements to facilitate redress, were generally reasonably good.

The prison was managed in partnership with the far larger Downview closed women’s prison some miles away, but the governor visited regularly and the deputy governor, who was on site full time, knew the prison well and was knowledgeable about the women in his care. Leadership in the prison was dynamic, ambitious, and visible. Some officers were new and inexperienced and would have benefited from better supervision and support, but this did not affect the particularly good staff-prisoner relationships we observed, which underpinned the positive work in the establishment.

The governor had set sensible priorities, but development plans needed to be sharper and would have benefited from a more consistent use of data. East Sutton Park was, however, a good prison. The governor and her team should be congratulated on their achievements.

Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
November 2023

 

The inspectors provide a short list of their major recommendations

What needs to improve at HMP/YOI East Sutton Park

During this inspection we identified five key concerns, of which two should be treated as priorities. Priority concerns are those that are most important to improving outcomes for prisoners. They require immediate attention by leaders and managers.

Leaders should make sure that all concerns identified here are addressed and that progress is tracked through a plan which sets out how and when the concerns will be resolved. The plan should be provided to HMI Prisons.

Priority concerns

  1. Improvements in outcomes, including those of greatestimportance to the well-being of prisoners, needed to be evidencedthough better use of data. This would give managers more robustevidence of weaknesses which would help to develop clearer actionplans and provide more robust accountability and oversight.
  2. Much of the work to promote equality and diversity had stalled.There was a lack of data used to evidence outcomes across groups.Our survey showed significantly more negative perceptions in a few keyareas and some women we spoke to described their experiences ofunfair treatment.

Key concerns

  1. Women on non-accredited courses did not use their workbooks torecord the range of employability skills and behaviours they haddeveloped. Consequently, they were not able to evidence to potentialemployers the range of skills they had acquired.
  2. Too many women did not understand health and safetyrequirements to keep themselves safe at work. For example, inhousekeeping, women did not wear appropriate personal protectiveequipment or understand how to use chemicals safely. They did notdevelop appropriate attitudes to working safely or to a high standard,which hindered the development of employability skills.
  3. Women needed much more support in education and otheractivities to help them acquire a fuller understanding of importantvalues such as respect, tolerance and equality.

Return to East Sutton Park

To read the full reports, follow the links below: